Sister

and anxious to sleep. Somehow I must have.

I dreamed of the color red: Pantone numbers PMS 1788 to PMS 1807—the color of cardinals and harlots, of passion and pomp; cochineal dye from the crushed bodies of insects; crimson; scarlet; the color of life; the color of blood.

The doorbell woke me.

tuesday

I arrive at the CPS office where spring has officially arrived. The faint scent of freshly mown grass from the park wafts in with each turn of the revolving door; the receptionists on the front desk are in summer dresses with brown faces and limbs that must have been self-tanned last night. Despite the warm weather, I am in thick clothes, overdressed and pale, a winter leftover.

As I go toward Mr. Wright’s office, I want to confide in him about my imagined stalker of yesterday. I just need to hear, again, that he is locked away in prison and after the trial will stay there for life. But when I go in, the spring sunshine floods the room, the electric light glares down, and in their brightness my ghost of fear left over from yesterday is blanched into nothing.

Mr. Wright turns on the tape recorder and we begin.

“I’d like to start today with Tess’s pregnancy,” he says, and I feel subtly reprimanded. Yesterday he asked me to start when I first “realized something was wrong,” and I began with Mum’s phone call during our lunch party. But I know now that wasn’t the real beginning. And I also know that if I had taken more time to be with you, if I had been less preoccupied with myself and listened harder, I might have realized something was very wrong months earlier.

“Tess became pregnant six weeks into her affair with Emilio Codi,” I say, editing out all the emotion that went with that piece of news.

“How did she feel about that?” he asks.

“She said she’d discovered that her body was a miracle.”

I think back to our phone call.

“Almost seven billion miracles walking around on this earth, Bee, and we don’t even believe in them.”

“Did she tell Emilio Codi?” asks Mr. Wright.

“Yes.”

“How did he react?”

“He wanted her to have the pregnancy terminated. Tess told him the baby wasn’t a train.”

Mr. Wright smiles and quickly tries to hide it, but I like him for the smile.

“When she wouldn’t, he told her she’d have to leave the college before the pregnancy started to show.”

“And did she?”

“Yes. Emilio told the authorities she’d been offered a sabbatical somewhere. I think he even came up with an actual college.”

“So who knew about it?”

“Her close friends, including other art students. But Tess asked them not to tell the college.”

I just couldn’t understand why you protected Emilio. He hadn’t earned that from you. He’d done nothing to deserve it.

“Did he offer Tess any help?” asks Mr. Wright.

“No. He accused her of tricking him into pregnancy and said that he wouldn’t be pressured into helping her or the baby in any way.”

“Had she ‘tricked’ him?” asks Mr. Wright.

I’m surprised at the amount of detail he wants from me, but then remember that he wants me to tell him everything and let him decide later what is relevant.

“No. The pregnancy wasn’t intentional.”

I remember the rest of our phone call. I was in my office overseeing a new corporate identity for a restaurant chain, multitasking with my job as older sister.

“But how can it possibly be an accident, Tess?”

The design team had chosen Bernard MT condensed typeface, which looked old-fashioned rather than the retro look I’d briefed.

“Accident sounds a little negative, Bee. Surprise is better.”

“Okay, how can you get a ‘surprise’ when there’s a drugstore in every high street selling condoms?”

You laughed affectionately, teasing me as I chastised you. “Some people just get carried away in the moment.”

I felt the implied criticism. “But what are you going to do?”